The US’ inclusion of Taiwan in its Indo-Pacific Strategy is geared toward weakening Beijing’s influence in Southeast Asia, as well as providing a Blue Dot Network to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a senior Executive Yuan member said yesterday.
Taiwan and the US would be seeking further collaboration on infrastructure construction and energy, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The US and Taiwan signed a memorandum of understanding on the Framework to Strengthen Infrastructure, Finance and Market Cooperation on Sept. 17, which would see the Ministry of Finance and the US Department of the Treasury establishing respective task forces to facilitate collaborative projects for government and private infrastructure via investments.
The Blue Dot Network aims to promote quality infrastructure investment that is open and inclusive, transparent, economically viable, and financially, environmentally and socially sustainable, while complying with international standards, laws and regulations.
At the inaugural Taiwan-US Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue that concluded on Friday last week, Taiwan and the US reached several agreements, including prioritizing the development of semiconductors, making the Indo-Pacific region a focal point, and acknowledging that the New Southbound Policy and the US’ Indo-Pacific Strategy share the same goal.
Taiwan and the US are partners that would undertake financial collaboration in the development of infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region, the source said.
Taiwan expressed its support for the principles underpinning the Blue Dot Network, the source added.
As Taiwan has established benign relations with all the regions in which the network is to operate — South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Latin America — the US is seeking to collaborate further with Taiwan on renewable energy and local infrastructure construction, the source said.
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
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A total lunar eclipse, an astronomical event often referred to as a “blood moon,” would be visible to sky watchers in Taiwan starting just before midnight on Sunday night, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The phenomenon is also called “blood moon” due to the reddish-orange hue it takes on as the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon, completely blocking direct sunlight from reaching the lunar surface. The only light is refracted by the Earth’s atmosphere, and its red wavelengths are bent toward the moon, illuminating it in a dramatic crimson light. Describing the event as the most important astronomical phenomenon